Originally Posted by Tommy Gun

You are right, I appologize for dwelling on the past so much in my previous posts.

The first thing you need to do is test your water very often...daily wound probably not be unreasonable at this point (since you had a fish die). Test frequently for Ammonia, Nitrites, and Nitrates. Ammonia and nitrites are very toxic to your fish so you will need to reduce them via water changes. Personally, I wouldn't let your ammonia levels raise above 2 ppm and the same for the nitrites. Like I may have said before, you can help your fish deal a little bit better with the nitrites by adding a small amount of salt to your tank (about one tablespoon/3 teaspoons per 10 gallons, because of your loaches, and dissolve it first, adding it slowly).

There is a good chance that you will not have any nitrites at all right now, but that is not really a good sign which suggests you can stop testing for them. What happens is that as fish wastes decay, they become ammonia and then one type of bacteria (benificial bacteria) will 'eat' that ammonia, creating nitrites. So, there is probably going to be a delay between when you see ammonia levels and then nitrites levels. Make sense?

The same thing can be said about nitrAte levels as well. After that first type of bacteria 'eats' the ammonia, making nitrites, then another sort of bacteria will 'eat' nitrites and make nitrates. Having nitrates in your tank is a good sign since this means your tank now contains both types of benificial bacteria and is well on its way to being 'cycled'. Once you start to see nitrates in your tank, dont give up on water testing frequently! I admit that I no longer test my tank any more than once or twice a month, however, my tanks are very well established and I still test just to make sure that there is no ammonia or nitrites in my tank...especially when I have a fish die, water quality is the first place I look usually.

So...all of that being said, you can read more about cycling in this article HERE. And for the record, I did not write that article in its entirety, so you can be sure that this is not all my opinion or anything along those lines.

From here on out, your tests are going to tell you when you need to change some water out. You are now going through a 'fishy cycle', even though it is unwittingly, which means you are using live fish to produce wastes in order to attract and propogate benificial bacteria. The problem here is that you dont have those good bacteria right now so your water is becoming polluted with ammonia and nitrites, toxic chemicals to your fish (and to us as well, by the way). So water changes are the way to go in order to lower those items. While doing water changes can slow your cycle down because removing ammonia and nitrites is essentially removing the food source for your eventual good bacteria, however if you dont remove some of that food source, your fish suffer and maybe die. So, this is a give and take situation, but dont worry, eventually your tank will cycle itself and you will not have to do water changes any more frequently than other hobbyists, like myself.

You can also help your tank out to some extent by adding bacteria via products such as BioSpira. To be honest, at first I thought all bacteria based products such as BioSpira were good, however, after another member, BJP, shed a lot of light on the subject, I have stuck with Biospira for all of my new tanks, including saltwater tanks. (Hopefully BJP can chime in here for you as well...I will send him a PM to ask him to take a look at this thread). Anyways, these products actually contain benificial bacteria, or supposedly do, which can help your tank along in varrying degrees. While I do not really intend to imply that these products are the end-all-be-all solution to situations like yours, based upon the experiements BJP did, and from what I understood from them, it seems as though they can help.

So, in the end, water changes and a little bit of salt could help you and your fish quite a bit here. Personally, I prefer the liquid type test kits over the test strips because the strips can become 'tainted' easily from things like high humidity, but in either case, you will need to test often in order to ensure that your fish can survive this cycle. If you would like, a few members have posted daily water test results on the forum so that other members can add more support or explainations as the tank-in-question progresses through a cycle.

Originally Posted by Tommy Gun

I think that you will find the swords to be a but more hardy and might be able to handle making it through a cycle. However, that is not a fact, but a generality at best so don't relax too much.

I also think that your loaches could have killed or contributed to the death of your puffer(s), but it is probably more likely that they simply died from another reason and you just found it in a location which suggested more than there really was. IME, clown loaches are pretty docile and I cannot recall reading a post about anyone having troubles with an overly aggressive loach....but again, this is a generality and not a fact. I think many people could tell you that once in a while he or she brings home a new fish which does not behave like its 'species profile' might suggest.

If I didn't already mention this, when you are using salt in your tank, you will need to replace some salt with every water change you do. Just be sure to re-add the correct amount of salt for the water you are replacing. For example, if you do a water change and take out 10 gallons of water, you would only want to add one tablespoon of salt...not the three tablespoons you initially added. Also, do not add any salt to compensate any water you add to 'top off' your tank after some has evaporated. The reasoning for this is because when water evaporates, it leaves the heavier salt salt in the tank....hence, if you keep adding salt, over time you could wind up with a saltwater aquarium. On the upside though, I believe that your scat(s) will benefit from the salt, even at higher levels, and I think that your swordtail's would benefit from salt as well, like most, if not all, other live bearers might.

My suggestion is to stop adding any new fish at this time...even if you have traded one for another...like your puffers for tiger barbs. At this point, you are just putting more fish in jeopardy. If you wind up losing a lot of fish though, you will need to compensate for the loss of those fishes' wastes. There are a few ways to go about doing this, so if you find yourself in that situation, I am sure all of us would love to help you out.

Originally Posted by mattrt09

ok so today i bought these



dont know if they will grow or not but its worth a try for 2 bucks =)